Shoes, Sadler's Wells Theatre

Every time I go to Sadler’s Wells now I come out wondering if there’s something wrong with my hearing, so loud and numbing are their speakers. It’s a blight on a lot of shows, but on none more so than Shoes, because this is the first major London production written by that celebrated musical witsmith Mr Richard Thomas since his Jerry Springer, The Opera, and last night I missed probably half the words that I’m guessing should be the chief merit.

So is it fair for me to say how disappointed I am by the production? You may have a better acoustic seat. On the other hand, I’m guessing that a lot of others were underwhelmed too, as I heard some of those giveaway exchanges at the end between couples: “Did you enjoy it?” rather than “Ohmigodwasnthatfantastic”, or the half-hearted killer judgment, “Yeah [beat], it was [half-beat] great.” I wish to be fair. I did notice a smattering of people giving it a standing ovation and screaming last night, but from the vastness of the interval party I deduce the presence of supportive friends, and many people around me were applauding in that okay-night-out way that doesn't betoken a smash hit.

The reason I pay attention to the public reception is that I would lay money that the role of Shoes in Sadler’s Wells' plans is not to startle with artistic merit but to sound the cash registers at the box office. The entire presentation of this show is one of off-West End hen-party fodder, a gluttonous splurge of nearly 30 songs about shoe brands fashioned for easy PR - sometimes (when I could hear the words) with sharply amusing effect. Manolo Blahnik and Jimmy Choo-choo-choo got a jolly amusing advert in the Nuns' chorus, and Christian Louboutin’s iconic black heels with the red sole make an eyecatchingly strange mask, if you’re into stilettos spearing your eye.

Richard Thomas (pictured right) is certainly the best asset of this show but he's picked a disappointingly stale subject and a limp collaborative team. We saw shoe fetishism done more wittily years ago in TV’s Sex and the City, with some spiky stories about how materialism can skew values - at its best when Carrie left her Manolos at the door of a friend with a white carpet, found later they’d been nicked and she’d been left with synthetic high-street, and she then attempted to get compensation out of her friend. That’s much more up the old Jerry Springer street than the cheesy events here.

Here we get episodes of “shoe-fessions” (you can share yours too with the Sadler’s Wells website, an invitation that so far no one has accepted). There is a sneakers-addicted b-girl, and a song about foot infections which nods at Tom Lehrer. The cursed wedding shoes number also has a welcome bite. Still, this is quite small beer, compared to Thomas’s Cattle Call, the dance musical he made for Phoenix in Leeds a couple of years ago. After all, this is Sadler’s Wells, the home of courage and risk. This is the one theatre in London that makes a claim to lead audience taste to dance with marvellous discoveries, or to give a break to exceptional individuals deserving the big time. I'm not satisfied it's happened here.

The staging - with huge video animations and a giant shoe balcony - has evidently had a lot spent on it, but its eager sweet-shop-meets-theatrical costumiers look chimes no resonance with the coolly addictive styling of top shoe dens (and I know a few). The boys are very gay in saucy flesh pants or purple lamé, the girls flock to and fro in spangly shorts and saucer-eyed delight. Most of the dancing, directed by Stephen Mear, is straight out of musical theatre school, tap, synchronised ball gymnastics and very bad ballet.

I did hear a couple of encouragingly amusing bits of sung dialogue: Boyfriend in designer shoe shop: “Buy something cheaper that looks as good.” Girls, hissing sulphurically, “Ooooohhh!” and whacking the dolt with their carrier bags. And an existential question to ponder: “What would you do if the shoe was on the other foot?”

The better songs sound as if they need some other context to appear in - musicals that haven’t yet been written around them - but I enjoyed the musical side, with a live band and some unusual instruments buried somewhere behind the amplification, while the two vibrant sopranos are a joy to hear, Alison Jiear and Kate Miller-Heidke, both capable of pingy operatic coloratura and with personality in spades. Thomas is a magpie, happily trifling with Monty Python one moment (the funny and silly Uggs dance for sheep, ram and holy Jesus), Poulenc’s Les Carmelites the next (the lusty Nuns). There's a cleverly tempered Bach piano parody for the b-girl acquiring dozens of new trainers, as the fugato multiplies its almost identical voices. And I liked the New Wave jazz (accordions, pattering keyboards, a rather Leona Lewis-style ballad for a lonesome soprano in her Simone Signoret mac) for the lothario in Hush Puppies bedding three girls at once.

Pity that the choreography is so bland, most of it. Of the four choreographers, Kate Prince of Into the Hoods makes "Hush Puppies" a slickly streetwise bedroom farce, and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui handles Thomas’s nasty mind nicely in the wedding shoes number and trots out an unexpectedly involving tarantella in “Salvatore Ferragamo”. The rest is limp, though the dancers worked hard, notably the wiry Aaron Sillis and b-girl Teneisha Bonner.

• Shoes is at Sadler's Wells until Saturday, with a second run now announced at the Peacock Theatre, 8 Feb-13 Mar 2011, and an international tour planned
  
• Share your "shoe-fession" on the Sadler's Wells Facebook page if you wish
• See what's on at Sadler's Wells in 2010-11